Cricket

Barry Jackson writing in last Sunday's Miami Herald: "Most hilarious play of the week? Had to be Warrior forward Chris Mills getting confused after a jump ball and attempting a shot at the wrong basket. "Just as bad: Maverick forward Samaki Walker fouled him. " 'I call it dumb and dumber,' Dallas Coach Don Nelson said. 'You get somebody dumb enough to shoot it in the wrong basket, and another guy dumb enough to foul him.' " 'If it didn't hurt so much, it would be funny.'

C. L. R. James, the Marxist philosopher, cricket scholar and international activist whose elegant yet simplistic style produced literary works ranging from a book on the Haitian revolution to a biography of Herman Melville, has died at his London home. The Associated Press reported Friday that he died Wednesday at age 88 in south London's primarily black Brixton District. He reportedly had a chest infection. In an obituary published Friday, the London newspaper The Independent called him "probably the most versatile and accomplished Afro-American intellectual of the 20th Century."

I was lucky to have worked for Peter Hemmings at the Los Angeles Opera, where he was founding general director (obituary, Jan. 4). His brilliance, artistic taste, creativity and deep love of opera were equaled by his kindness and dedication to his staff and to the community of Los Angeles. His commitment to children led to the Los Angeles Opera becoming an international leader in opera education. I shall never forget the vision of this elegant and aristocratic gentleman attending operas about teenage immigrants or inner-city cricket teams performed by his beloved resident artists and schoolchildren at Manual Arts High School, or watching him squeeze into pint-sized auditorium seats at 168th Street Elementary.

Doug Burton, the veteran Australian photo-journalist who runs the America's Cup lab at the media center, was driving to work this morning when he stopped to pick up a couple of young hitchhikers. "They had a bloody funny accent, so I asked 'em where they were from," Burton said. "They said 'Noo Yawk. We're trying to get to Fremantle to watch the Super Bowl.' " Burton did not know how to break the bad news to them.

Some marked the occasion with champagne toasts, others gathered around bonfires and cheered, and at least one group set free a flight of peace doves. All were hailing the signing of a treaty at the Washington summit to eliminate U.S. and Soviet ground-launched intermediate-range nuclear missiles. Governments around the world Thursday welcomed the treaty as a step toward further and more meaningful reductions in nuclear arsenals.

Never underestimate the power of a well-timed "just sayin'. " That was one of the lessons learned by Australian actress Margot Robbie while filming her career-making performance in Martin Scorsese's "The Wolf of Wall Street. " Portraying the Brooklyn-born trophy wife of Leonardo DiCaprio's greedy corporate raider Jordan Belfort - in the $100-million, big-screen adaptation of Belfort's 2007 memoir of the same name - a casual suggestion by Robbie resulted in "Wolf's" most shocking scene.

Ever since Walt Disney began turning out feature-length animated films, scholars, theologians and journalists have plumbed the depths of the simple morality tales for deeper religious meanings and messages. Was Snow White's eating of the poison apple an allusion to the Fall in the Garden of Eden? When the puppet maker Geppetto was swallowed by a whale, was that a veiled reference to Jonah in Hebrew Scriptures? Were Jiminy Cricket's initials in "Pinocchio" a hidden reference to Jesus Christ?